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A Rare Pair of Number Theoretic Breakthroughs

Writing for ScienceNews, Julie Rehmeyer gives perspective on two recent—and simultaneous—advances in number theory: Yitang Zhang's bound on the prime gap and Harald Helfgott's proof of the odd Goldbach conjecture.

Rehmeyer quotes Andrew Granville (University of Montreal) saying that it was Zhang's very isolation that allowed him to pursue the path that ultimately brought him success, and repeats the estimation of Roger Heath-Brown (University of Oxford) that Helfgott's proof "must have 60 or 70 clever new ideas in it."